an urchin scarcely higher than his knee. The presence of the young in the ward of an asylum seems to light it up like a sunbeam. The love of children does indeed lie at the very foundation of the human heart, and we cannot estimate too highly their beneficial influence upon the brain which is recovering from the horrors of insanity. One of the most important points in reference to insane paupers, as we have already intimated, is the bringing them as speedily as possible under treatment. The reluctance of the lunatic himself to be removed is usually extreme, and it is marvellous what ingenuity he will often employ to thwart the design. Southey relates that a madman who was being conveyed from Rye to Bedlam slept in the Borough. He suspected whither he was going, and, having contrived by rising early to elude his attendant, he went to Bedlam, and told the keepers that he was about to bring them a patient. "But," said he, "in order to lead him willingly, he has been persuaded that I am mad, and accordingly I shall come as the madman. He will be very outrageous when you seize him, but you must clap on a strait-waistcoat." The device completely succeeded. The lunatic returned home, the sane man was shut up, and until he was exchanged at the end of four days, remained in his strait-waistcoat, having doubtless exhibited a violence which amply justified its use. The aversion of the sufferer himself to be taken away coincides with an equal aversion on the part of his relatives and friends to send him from home, nor do they take the step till the madness grows intolerable. Precious time is thus lost at the outset, and when the removal occurs it is mostly to the workhouse. Here the patient is usually kept during the remainder of the curable stage of his malady. The parochial authorities are generally guided by an immediate consideration for the pockets of the rate-payers, rather than by any care for the welfare of the lunatic; and, as they can maintain him in the "house" at three shillings a-week--when they would have to pay nine if they transferred him to the county asylum--in the workhouse he remains until he becomes so dirty or troublesome in his habits that the guardians are willing to pay the difference to get rid of him. The first few months of the disease, within the narrow limits of which full 60 per cent. of the recoveries take place, are thus allowed to run to waste. Months fly by, and the victim subsides into the class of incurables. This produces a second evil. As the drafts of incurables are perpetually flowing into the asylums, they become "blocked up" in the course of a few years, and are converted into houses for the detention of hopeless cases. To this condition three-fourths of the asylums are already reduced, and the efforts of philanthropic medicine are brought to a dead lock by the short-sightedness of the parish authorities, who do not consider that for the sake of saving a few shillings in the board of Betty Smith in the